A young author with a “photographic memory” writes of learning to use an AK-47

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Sarah Crichton, 229 pp., $22.

By Janice Harayda

At the age of 13, Ishmael Beah practiced for combat in his native Sierra Leone by “stabbing the banana trees with bayonets.” He had fled into the bush months earlier, carrying a few cassettes by LL Cool J and other rappers, when rebel forces attacked village and scattered his family.

Beah stayed on the run, near starvation, until captured by government soldiers who promised that if he joined the army, he would have food and a chance to avenge the loss of parents. Afraid he would be shot if he refused, he became part of a squad of boys between the ages of 7 and 16 who learned to use AK-47s and other weapons against the rebels who were still terrorizing the countryside. He also became addicted to the marijuana, cocaine mixed with gunpowder, and “white tablets” – presumably amphetamines – that the army gave young conscripts to ease their fears and keep them awake on patrol. For more than two years, he says, killing was “a daily activity” that he describes in chilling detail in A Long Way Gone. Then one day United Nations workers showed up – as unexpectedly as rebels had attacked his old village — and demanded that the army release some of boys, including Beah, who made his way to Guinea and from there to New York.

These experiences make for a story that, if gripping, is at times hard to believe, and not just because the killings it describes are so savage. Now 26 years old, Beah could not have taken many notes as a soldier, because their discovery could have led to his death. Instead, he implies, he relied his “photographic memory” in telling his story. But you wonder if that memory might have been impaired by near-starvation or the chronic use of drugs, an issue that A Long Way Gone doesn’t address. And some of the events seem implausible regardless. In one scene Beah tells how he and several friends “lay in the dirt” on a coffee farm near a ruined village and eavesdropped on rebels who played cards and chatted “for hours.” He says he heard one rebel say that his group had just burned three villages:

“Another rebel, the only one dressed in full army gear, agreed with him. ‘Yes, three is impressive, in just a few hours in the afternoon.’ He paused, playing with the side of his G3 weapon. ‘I especially enjoyed burning this village. We caught everyone here. No one escaped. That is how good it was. We carried out the command and executed everyone. Commander will be pleased when he gets here.’ He nodded, looking at the rest of the rebels, who had stopped the game to listen to him. They all agreed with him, nodding their heads. They gave each other high fives and resumed their game.”

If Beah and his friends were close enough to hear that conversation, how did the rebels avoid hearing them “for hours”? If the boys could see a rebel “nod,” and others “nodding” in agreement, how could the rebels not see them? It appears that they could have avoided notice only by hiding behind bushes dense enough that neither group could see, or hear, the other.

Beah has described some of his wartime experiences at a United Nations conference and in other settings likely to have included experts who could have challenged aspects of his story that didn’t ring true. Even so, the tragic abuse of child soldiers is so important – and has received so little attention – that you wish he had made an airtight case for believing all that he has to say about it.

Best line: Beah writes his first visit to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone: “I was amazed at how many lights there were without the sound of a generator.”

Worst line: The scene at the coffee farm, described above, is one of a number that make you question the accuracy of some of Beah’s recollections.

Editor: Sarah Crichton

Published: February 2007

Furthermore: On Feb. 15, A Long Way Gone replaced Mitch Albom’s For One More Day as the only book sold at Starbucks coffee shops in the United States.

Reading group guides: The site for Farrar, Straus www.fsgbooks.com has a reading group guide. An additional reading group guide to A Long Way Gone was posted on One-Minute Book Reviews on March 5. This unauthorized guide covers questions that do not appear in the official FSG guide. It is archived with the March posts and also in the Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides category.

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“Beasts of No Nation” by Uzodinma Iweala. A boy is forced to join a group of guerilla fighters in an unnamed African country and does what he can to survive. Africa’s my birthplace and so I love African literature.

Can you tell us anything more about this one? For example, is it fiction or nonfiction? And how good is the writing? I suspect that a lot of reading groups are going to read “A Long Way Gone” and might be interested in knowing about similar books they could read on the topic. Book club members who visit this site looking for information about Beah might appreciate knowing more about Iweala.

Iweala, who lived part of his life in Nigeria and attended Harvard University, wrote the book as his senior thesis after reading about child soldiers from Sierra Leone. His mother is Nigeria’s minister of finance. It is his debut novel he was 23 when it was published in 2005.

The book is fiction. It has received considerable critical acclaim from sources like Time Magazine, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Times, and Rolling Stone. Metacritic ranked the book #2 on its “Best of 2005″ books list. The writing is sheer brilliance – especially for a debut novel.

Excerpts from an article:

It has been described as “brilliant,” “astonishing,” “riveting,” “extraordinary,” “searing,” “electrifying” and “powerful.” Salman Rushdie wrote, “It’s one of those rare occasions when you see a first novel and you think, ‘This guy is going to be very, very good.'”

Writer Jamaica Kincaid, who was Iweala’s thesis adviser, gave the work to her agent, who showed it to HarperCollins executive editor Tim Duggan.

“It was unlike anything I’d read before,” said Duggan, who will edit Iweala’s next two books. “The diction, voice and writing style were very unique. It was an emotionally heart-pounding story. It made me look at things that were happening in Africa in a different way.

“I think he’s going to be one of the best literary writers this country has. In each book, I think he will break new ground in terms of style and voice. He’s a rare talent and he has great range and versatility. I think whatever he does is going to be unusual and fascinating. I want to be there to help cultivate him in his career as a writer.”

however searing,electrifying and astonishing the stories- there were still diamonds being worn on the red carpet for the Oscars.
Perhaps we just need more accounts of life in Sierra Leone for it to become real